China

The Coronavirus outbreak has taken the lives of more than 100 people so far. So how exactly are Christians supposed to respond to the outbreak? 

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged that “The only way we will defeat this outbreak is for all countries to work together in a spirit of solidarity and cooperation. We are all in this together and we can only stop it together."

Almost 500 years ago, a similar approach was encouraged when German Christians in Wittenberg – facing the re-emergence of black plague in 1527 – called on Protestant reformist Martin Luther for guidance on whether they should flee for their lives.

Bob Fu never intended this would be his life. Born in Shandong Province to a disabled father and beggar mother, he enrolled in university, fully intending to join the Communist Party and become a government official. God, however, had other plans. An American professor gave him a biography of a Chinese intellectual who converted to Christianity. As Fu told the Wall Street Journal, “that book changed my life.” After graduation, Fu taught English at a Communist Party School in Beijing while he and his wife, Heidi, became active in the house church movement. They even established a Bible school, which used chairs he borrowed from the Communist Party’s school. The Communist Party didn’t quite share Fu’s sense of irony. He and his wife were jailed.

Communist officials in China are now using regulations restricting religious freedom to prohibit religious funerals.

As the impeachment trial continues, across the world in China, there is a coronavirus outbreak.

China moved up four spots in persecution watchdog, Open Doors' 2020 World Watch List. 

Thirteen years ago, Chinese Pastor Wang Yi visited the White House to discuss the state of religious freedom in China with then-president George W. Bush. As 2019 came to a close, Wang was sentenced to nine years in prison for simply sharing the gospel illustrating the peril religious minorities in China face every day.

A new Chinese law will require Chinese Christians to fully submit to the ruling Communist Party

The Trump administration is imploring the Chinese government to release a megachurch pastor who has been sentenced to 9 years for simply sharing the Gospel.

A pastor in China was sentenced to nine years in prison for preaching the Gospel.

In a meeting of Chinese Communist officials and religious advisors last month, the panel decided that religious texts should be re-interpreted “to keep pace with the times” and to not offend Chinese senses.